Shelley Niro

Mohawk artist, Shelley Niro, has focused her multi-media practice on the re-presentation of Indigenous identity within the contemporary context. As a photographer, Niro’s striking portraits of friends and family members reveal an individual and communal strength of presence and self-determination, while images of landscape from the traditional Mohawk territory support the essential relationship between the land and Niro’s past and present communities.

Shelley Niro has exhibited her photographs, films, and sculptural installations internationally across Canada, the United States and Europe. Recent solo-exhibitions have included presentation at Nuit Blanche, Toronto, 2022; YYZ Toronto, 2022; Dunlop Art Gallery, Regina, 2022; Art Gallery of South-Western Manitoba, Brandon, 2021; Robert Langlin Art Gallery of Laurier University, Waterloo, 2020; Art Gallery of Peterborough, 2019; and Art Gallery of Hamilton, 2018. Niro has been the recipient of numerous awards including the 2017 Scotiabank Photography Award and the 2017 Governor Generals Award. Her travelling retrospective exhibition Shelley Niro: 500 Year Itch is on view currently at the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian in New York, USA, through January 1, 2024.